^^ So no responsibility for the kid’s future even though you made the choice to have the kid?
" So no responsibility for the kid’s future even though you made the choice to have the kid? "
- Another strange question. You take responsibility by paying for college if you want and you do not take responsibility if you do not want. My kid was responsible enough to choose a free tuition option for herself, while she could have gone to Ivy. She was rewarded fir that handsomely - we paid for her medical school. Wise decision led to a loan free life, not too bad! Again, all of it was just a matter of choice / desire. She wanted to go to a free tuition school and we wanted to pay for her medical school. Others decided in a different way, who is to say that one is right and another is wrong? We are in free country (yet!!!), please, enjoy your freedom of choices fully, you do not know, you may loose them soon.
@MiamiDAP, I think there is a significant difference between refusing to pay for your child’s education and giving your child a choice on how to spend the education money you saved for him/her. I showed my 8th grader her 529 along with costs for undergrad and graduate school at her dream college. I told her it would be up to her to decide how to spend that 529 in case she gets into that top school as an undergrad . I too hope she chooses another college that gives merit aid for undergrad and uses 529 funds for graduate school.
^^ The problem, MiamiDAP, is that not every student is intellectually gifted enough to earn the scholarship that your daughter did. A student who qualifies for neither merit nor need-based aid will have a tough time getting through college without parental assistance. I do think a parent should take responsibility for assisting a child to get an education if they have the ability to do so. I agree that it’s a free country and parents can decide as they will, but if a parent has the means to do so and makes the decision not to help with college, particularly when the parent’s financial position means that the child cannot get any aid beyond an unsubsidized loan, I do not have a lot of respect for that choice. (I’m not talking about paying for a $65,000 a year education; I’m talking about helping the student to get a reasonable education).
Perhaps just as important as the answer to this question is that the parents should figure out their finances so that they can answer this question in an informed manner, and inform their kids early (well in advanced of college applications) what (if anything) they can pay without breaking their financial plans.
There have been enough April unpleasant surprise stories on these forums where parents promise or imply a certain amount for the kid’s college, only to deliver much less in April, long after it is too late for the kid to make a more appropriate application list if s/he had known the previous fall.
Actually, an interesting question might be “should parents’ financial support for college come with strings attached”. I.e., is it ok for parents to say “I won’t pay for college if you don’t maintain 3.5 GPA in HS”. Maybe it’s too high and I live in a bubble where a “B+” can be earned by anyone who puts in enough effort, I’m sorry. Feel free to substitute any number in it. The strings could be anything - house chores, sports, volunteering, etc. Does it make me a bad parent for telling our daughter “her” 529 savings would go to her brother or our grandkids if she doesn’t “contribute” by working at least reasonably hard in HS?
Before all this crazy merit-based discounting (price discrimination) existed, it seemed fair that parents who could afford it were indeed responsible for paying for their child’s education; only those whose parents couldn’t afford it were getting help. What is grating on me now as a parent is the thought of paying full freight on an inflated tuition cost based on offering selective discounts (so-called merit aid) to families who mostly don’t need the aid but respond to the discount. I am subsidizing a slightly better student who doesn’t need the money. Now my DD actually received generous merit aid from a well-regarded but not top tier school, so I am the winner here if we accept this, somebody else is paying full freight to subsidize my DD who doesn’t need the money. Merit-based aid on a large scale (beyond a small number of genius-type scholarships) needs to go away, replaced by lower sticker prices for everybody.
We have had an understanding/agreement in our family for several generations. Your education will be paid for but you are compelled to do the same for your kids. There is something very helpful in being able to start a career without college debt but also having the discipline to save when the time is right for your kids.
@typiCAmom wrote “Does it make me a bad parent for telling our daughter “her” 529 savings would go to her brother or our grandkids if she doesn’t “contribute” by working at least reasonably hard in HS?”
I think it makes you a bad parent for wording it like that. All it does is create resentment on the kid’s side.
How you explain your expectations to your kids is crucial, in my opinion. I think it would be a lot healthier to say to a kid “if you don’t get a 3.0, it means to us that sending you to a college is a waste of our hard-earned money. You and we would be better served by exploring another route.”
Threatening a kid and using the brother is just mean. Plus ‘reasonably hard’ is subjective. I lean towards hard numbers and objective goals.
Now that I am years past this decision I can honestly say paying for college needs to be an " all hands on deck"
proposition. Parents should save, kids should work their butt off to do as well as possible and target the best school/merit aid ratio possible.
Its all one big pot of nuclear family money and everyone in the family is just as important as the next guy. There is no way dad/mom should work 18 years just to put you through the college of your choice while giving up all their own desires.
No child should believe he is more important than anyone else in the family.
We all have one life on earth and we all deserve to enjoy it. Not a popular opinion on CC.
First of all, you have NO WAY of knowing your daughter would have been accepted to an Ivy, @MiamiDAP. And as others have pointed out to you many, many times, not every kid has the intellectual capacity to earn a full merit scholarship like your daughter did. I have two kids. One did earn a full merit scholarship to a second-tier school, and he opted to take the money, passing on more prestigious options. The other does not have that capacity. NEITHER was getting admitted to ANY Ivy, even though I happen to be an alum of one that meets full need.
Let me just ask you, if your DD hadn’t earned that scholarship, would you have told her to go to work, that college was off the table? I can’t believe that would have been your stance. You not only paid for private high school for your daughter, you paid her medical school costs because she got that full scholarship to Miami of Ohio. That’s a far cry from having a kid and then telling them they’re on their own at 18. Did you have high expectations for her? Of course, and rightfully so, because she’s obviously very bright and very hardworking. But what if she were not very bright, but WAS very hard working? I know you disagree with that premise, but I don’t believe in your heart of hearts you honestly believe all kids have your DD’s ability. If you did, you wouldn’t brag so much about her.
I agree with @typiCAmom that such a commitment shouldn’t be with no strings attached. Obviously, the student has to hold up their end of the bargain, but nothing is truly “free” in this free country you speak of, @MiamiDAP. SOMEBODY is paying for it. Either you, the taxpayer, the college’s endowment, or the parents of the full pay student who helps subsidize all those merit awards that kids like yours and mine received.
(@DHMchicago, while agree the system is completely out of whack, rather than bang my head against the wall, I chose to look for schools where my son could get merit money, even if that meant somebody else was subsidizing it. If the school was willing to pay my kid to come, I wasn’t going to turn away the offer. I certainly wasn’t twisting anybody else’s arm to go there full pay. They had other options too.)
Yes, we live in a free country, but that doesn’t mean we should all be irresponsible when we have the ABILITY to help our children go to college. And if we’re truly at risk of “loosing” our freedom of choice, it will not be because parents limit their family size to the number of children they can afford to educate, but because a lot of folks aren’t happy with all the “freeloaders” out there, and will punish everybody.
@DHMchicago, I don’t understand why does it have to be a zero-sum game. Merit aid does just that - rewards merit. If we get away with it, what incentive would most capable kids have to study harder and achieve more? If we make all the merit aid available as full-need aid, there would also be less incentive for the parents to work harder and save for their kids colleges. I agree not all kids may be capable of super-achieving due to circumstances beyond their control. But they should still put in the effort proportionate to their capabilities.
@MotherOfDragons, I don’t remember my exact wording. I think at that time I compared our decision to merit scholarships that require you to maintain certain GPA. She and I know she is fully capable of studying hard and performing well. Yes, if something beyond her control comes up that affects her performance - illness, emotional trauma of losing a loved one, etc., of course we won’t withdraw our financial support over that. But all things being equal, she needs to earn our financial support like she’d need to earn any merit scholarship.
In our family we always try to achieve more for less. That is why it is so difficult to make a decision now when she has some outstanding options, but at full pay.
“I think there is a significant difference between refusing to pay for your child’s education and giving your child a choice on how to spend the education money you saved for him/her.”
-Whatever is the difference, it is nobody’s business. If parents refuse to pay for education, why do others care? If outsider really cares, the only way to help a child is to open your pocket and pay, blaming parents will not make any difference.
And again, some saved for kids and others did not. We did not save a penny for either of our kids college education, it was our choice not to save.
"The problem, MiamiDAP, is that not every student is intellectually gifted enough to earn the scholarship that your daughter did. " - there is no intellectual gift needed but a lot of hard work and making the decisions based on what one can afford. If it is not the case, then why parents are to blame?
You paid for your daughter’s med school out-of-pocket, didn’t you? That’s got to be a couple hundred thousand dollars, which means you had to have substantial savings. You may not have had them earmarked for college, but you had savings.
austin,
Everybody who works saves for retirement. We paid out of our retirement funds, it was our choice despite of D’s arguments that we cannot possibly do so. She was ready to choose the cheapest option for the med. school, but we stopped her and told her to choose the one that she liked the best. It happened to be the most expensive of her choices and looking back, it was very wise decision.
Again, all decisions are very personal and nobody is in a position to judge others. Many were appalled with our decision to spend about $300k out of our retirement funds on D’s education, but I am always looking forward to satisfy myself instead of pleasing others, and that was one of the most satisfying factors of my life.
I say, be proud of yourself no matter if you decide to pay for kids’ education or not. You took care of your kids one way or another, you did whatever you could and nobody out there should tell you otherwise!
Assumes facts not in evidence about a WHOLE lot of people!
@MiamiDAP, I agree with you, “-Whatever is the difference, it is nobody’s business. If parents refuse to pay for education, why do others care?”. We all choose how much we spend on our kids and towards what goals - i.e. private lessons/athletic teams vs. school teams/music or art school classes, public vs. private elementary/middle/high, expensive pre-college program vs. community college classes, etc. We all have different life circumstances, different careers, family sizes, etc., some are able to save a lot, some not so much. I bet very few people here have finances to give their kids the best of EVERYTHING so we need to prioritize, make choices, etc.
So to me, a more interesting question than “should you pay for your child’s education” would be “how would you spend 100K on your child over the lifetime”. Again, please don’t jump on me saying that not everyone has this kind of money. Let’s just say hypothetically, someone dear to you passes away and you now need to take care of this child who you love dearly, as much as your own. However, your income is just enough to cover your family needs, retirement, college for your kids, etc. So you “inherit” $100K on top of monthly stipend that covers the child’s food, clothes, toys, medical - i.e., essentials. How do you spend that 100K? Excellent private schooling during early years to get the child on track academically, private lessons to develop his/her talents, college or graduate school?
Hope I’m not hi-jacking the thread, feel free to ignore it if I am 
There are probably lots of “it depends” here.
How good are the public schools? The worse they are, there is more incentive to spend more on a good private school.
How affordable would colleges be without the extra money (based on net price after financial aid and scholarships)? If the financial limitations are too limiting on college options, there is more incentive to spend more on college.
@ucbalumnus, let’s assume average public schools - i.e. not stellar, but if you work hard, the opportunities to excel are there. And with colleges - my understanding is that if you do reasonably well in school and on tests, there are always some affordable options - from lower-tier privates that offer full ride to community colleges/in-state school transfers.